The media industry may be very worried about the state of printed newspapers and magazine sales, but if the subscription figures of the WSJ on Kindle are anything to go by, then digital could prove a successful replacement.

Les Hinton, head of Dow Jones, says the WSJ already has 30,000 subscribers for its e-edition on the Kindle. Those subscribers pay either $10 or $15 a month which means revenue in the region of $4.5 million a year before Amazon takes its cut.

Considering the short period of time WSJ has been on the digital market that surely must be seen as an encouraging sign for the newspaper industry; and an early sign that digital newspapers and magazines will be the norm within a few years.

As paidContent rightly points out though, how many of those digital subscribers have stopped buying the printed version of the WSJ? Or are these new customers who didn’t buy the paper before?